Weathering, take 2
Entry posted by wombatofludham in Blog
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You wait months and two blog entries come together...
Having experimented successfully yesterday with neat paint pigment powder as a trackbed weathering medium, today I turned my attention back to the rolling stock, to test a possible source of significantly cheaper pigment: Ladies eyeshadow.
Yes ladies, your eyeshadow will now be under threat from the modeller in your life.
My brother, an expert sci-fi modeller, suggested this hack, so I bought a pack of 6 Goth-like shades (white to charcoal grey) for £2.85 from Tatbay, and a 12 pack of "neutrals" from the same supplier who charged me £3.35 including a multibuy discount. That's £6.20 for 18 colours. Compare that to £8 plus £1.75 postage for three, smaller pigments made for modellers, and you can see why I was interested in trying these face warpaint shades.
They are perfect. The pigment is finer, and doesn't like brushing on so much as modelling pigments, but because, apparently, ladies like to blend their warpaint, they are great for adding subtle tone changes, but also are easily blended with the Mk1 finger as well as the sponge applicators, ideal as train bodies tend not to be as smooth as skin and can rip the make up applicators. They also respond well to application by cotton bud.
i tried them on three different train bodies: a scrap Lima 87 with their less than perfect paintwork, a Bachmann 150 with modern paint and printing, and a repainted Hornby 86 using brush applied commercially available paint, and separately applied transfers, in order to see if there were any reactions or odd behaviours when interacting with the different paint jobs. Given the Lima was the worst, the Bachmann the best and the Hornby in the middle, I figured it was a reasonably scientific experiment. All coped well with the pigments and none suffered any untoward behaviour.
It was clear though that the finer pigment in the warpaint needed fixing. Again, I wanted to conduct an experiment. For the Tamiya model pigments I've been using a clear modelling lacquer, semi matt, which has been good, but costs £6 for 85g, but as I have some Daler-Rowney Pastel fixative, which is £12-14 for a 400g can. I thought I would try it on the eyeshadow to see if it causes problems or attacks the plastic. Again, the experiment worked, no obvious reactions either from the eye paint or the plastic. So, all in all, a useful day's experimentation.
However, gents, if you want to try eyeshadow as a weathering medium I strongly suggest you buy your own, or be prepared to wear your happy sacks as ear-rings if you borrow the other half's makeup bag.
The two make up packs sourced from Tatbay, showing the subtle shading possibilities and the finer grained pigment. You get 18 shades for just over six sheets, compared to eight for three Tamiya weathering master shades - and the amount per tint is probably three times what you get in the "proper" model pack.
Experiment 1: Bachmann. Using the sponge applicator and cotton buds you can get some good streaking effects.
Experiment 2. Italian pish. Difficult to see here due to the lighting and the extremely matt base paint but the Italian paint job took the pigment well. I was concerned, given Lima's 1970s reputation for non-sticking paint that would strip if you blew on it, the pigment might react, but it didn't. Fortunately, I have only a few Lima bodies to weather, all of the much better later fully painted variety, but the fact the old "show it the paint brush and that'll do" unvarnished paint coped is encouraging.
Experiment 3 - Hornby/modeller repaint. These images are post spraying with the fixative. Surprisingly it didn't dilute the pigment too much, when I used to do paintings in pastel, spraying with the fixative was always horrendous as your carefully composed artwork would have some of the vibrancy sucked out of it. The fixative worked better than expected, and really seals in the face paint. That dirt ain't going nowhere in a hurry. Probably because I used the chassis under a Class 81...
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